


the many meanings of closeness

by Miss_Ash



Category: Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020), Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Crack, Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff, full confession there's some angst now but I CAN'T HELP IT, lil bit of PwP here and there because why not?, my random collections and I must be stopped, please, someone save me from myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 13,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23715988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Ash
Summary: A collection of drabbles filling (some of) the QuarantApril Break Down the Door prompts, all ~500 words or less. Full prompts and ratings at the beginning of each chapter.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher & Jack Robinson, Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 398
Kudos: 237
Collections: Break Down the Door Challenge





	1. Kettle

**Author's Note:**

> My laptop is dead, I've stolen a relatives, and quarantine has apparently broken me because I thought it would be a good idea to give quarantapril the whumptober treatment and fill half the damn prompts. I'll mainly be doing the phrack ones or otherwise leaning them phrack focused, though, so that at least gave me an out on _some_ of them.
> 
> Originally my plan was to do them all in 200 words or less, but I'm me, so that wasn't happening. I upped myself to 500 and I am _sticking to it goddammit_. Or trying to. I have virus!fic to write and that's my priority, so that should help me keep on track. 
> 
> And with that said, happy quarantine, everyone – here's a bunch of short, dumb fluff.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Don't touch!" - **G**

“Don’t touch!”

The words are a second too late, lost in the sizzling hiss of the burn as it sinks into Jack’s fingers. There’s a clatter and a curse, the kettle falling to the floor and one hand grabbing the other in shock and pain. 

Then there are more fingers, her fingers, soft and cool where his feel as though fire is roaring through them and up his arm. He focuses on her fingers. 

“I told you not to touch it,” she clucks, though the reprimand is warm and fond. She walks him, where he seems too shocked to move, to the sink – and then the cool caress of water is on his skin, silk on the smoldering embers of pain. 

“Honestly,” she smirks, letting go as he assumes the cold water becomes too much for her unburnt hands. For him it remains bliss, though less so without her gentle touch. “I wish you’d take better care of yourself sometimes, Jack.”

“Pot, kettle,” he shoots back, but when he looks up the blue of her eyes is nearly eclipsed. 

His breath catches, the heat of the burn suddenly insignificant compared to the heat that coils in his stomach. She is closer than sanity might ever dictate, her eyes on his lips.

“I still wish you'd be more careful.”

“My apologies, Miss Fisher,” the words are just a breath, hummed into the chorus of running water as it continues to soothe the ache he finds he no longer cares about. “I’ll endeavour to be more cautious with my person in future.”

“Good,” she sighs, “because I have things planned that rather require your being in one piece.”

Her eyebrow arches, her lips curling up. 

Jack shuts off the water. 

His skin tingles where the burn meets the air again. His spine tingles with the way her eyes caress his body like the water had his hand. 

“You should get that seen to,” she tells him, eyes flicking down to the injured fingers. Her gaze says she knows that he won’t. 

She knows he won’t be going anywhere.

The cool of her skin will be balm enough. 

  
  



	2. Vase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drunken Confession - **G**

“It was me!”

The room turns, seemingly as one, to where Dot has risen from her seat – hands wringing, eyes wide with liquor-fuelled shame. 

“What was you, Dot?” Phryne asks, raising an eyebrow, trying to repress the tick that wants to pull her lips into a smile. 

“The Ming vase!” she exclaims, and Phryne’s eyes widen, gaze flicking briefly to her Aunt Prudence – ready to step in lest she try rend the girl limb from limb. 

The day of the accident every soul in the vicinity had been lucky to escape with their lives. 

Even Phryne had been a little scared, in truth.

“I broke it,” Dot continues, voice choked (and slurred, but it’s Christmas, and the demands of motherhood seem to have weakened her already limited tolerance). “I was dusting it ready for the party and I don’t know what happened but it just –” she makes an aborted gesture with her hand, swaying slightly as she does, and Phryne chokes down the giggle – hand slipping without thought into Jack’s, who squeezes her fingers gently in what she can only assume is recognition of how very hard she’s trying not to laugh at poor Dot’s distress. 

“I know it was wrong to lie – I’ve felt so wretched about it. I’ve been saying five Hail Mary’s every night, but it’s too much. I can’t live with the guilt anymore. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Stanley.”

Dot turns, as does everyone else, to where Prudence sits – brandy glass in hand – staring at something on the opposite wall. 

Phryne’s eyes flit between them, heart in her throat, ready to pick up whomever’s pieces end up on the floor. 

The room sits silent, tense, everyone waiting on the older woman’s response. 

Then a snort of laughter escapes her, and Phryne (along with everyone else by the looks of things) blinks in surprise. 

Her aunt descends into heaving guffaws, and Phryne throws a brief glance at Jack – who shrugs, as perplexed as she is – and back again. 

She laughs for minutes that stretch, brandy slopping dangerously in her glass as her body shakes with it, the rest of the room sitting in quiet consternation. 

“Oh, my dear girl,” Prudence says finally, wiping at her eyes with the hand that doesn’t hold her liquor. “You didn’t break anything – I broke it and put it back on the stand one night when I was sleepwalking. I only remembered after I’d already scolded you all for it – but then it was too late.”

Phryne feels her mouth fall open.

Jack’s own mouth is suddenly at her ear, words barely south of scandalised. “How much brandy has she had, Phryne?”

She bites her lip to contain the grin that threatens, staring from Dot to her aunt and back.

Dot looks about ready to faint, or perhaps even curse, and Prudence is smiling back into her glass, attention caught by the ripples created by her swaying hand.

“I don’t know,” she breathes in response. “But Mr. Butler is getting a raise.”

  
  



	3. Checkmate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Friends to lovers - **G**

It happens slowly. 

They liken it to a dance but, really, really it’s more like a chess match. 

To start with they are on opposing sides; black versus white, their pieces separate – staring each other down across unexplored tiles. 

She is white, and she goes first, encroaching into the no man’s land that waits, static, between them. Every move she makes, though, he matches. She moves a pawn, so does he. She flirts, he rebuffs. She takes his bishop, he takes her knight. They share supper, then whiskey. His pawns are decimated, but she is down both rooks. He gets divorced, she falters and as she does, she reaches for him. 

They are excellent opponents. Equally footed and, thus, well matched. The game spins out, lengthy but exhilarating, bloody and yet tenderly played. He checks her, and she feels it like a personal slight. He is done with her, done with them, done with the game – and her king comes dangerously close to toppling. 

Her charm is her secret weapon, though, and he missed the fact that her bishop was already hiding on his side of the board. She takes his knight, removes the check, and play recommences. 

It’s different. 

Their pieces are all over the place, littered across the board. There is no clear side anymore save for where the kings, their hearts, sit circled by the few pieces they have kept to protect them. Everything else is a scattered collection of what used to be defenses, excuses, irreversibly integrated and slowly removing each other from play. 

It comes to a head when she checks him. 

There are fearful few pieces left in play, and the move is risky – if inevitable. His remaining rook is poised to take her remaining knight where she jumps; she cannot resist the move anyway. She cannot resist the curling satisfaction of checking him, finally, cannot resist the taste of him on her tongue. 

The loss of the knight leaves her defenceless, briefly, and the path to victory seems clear.

Whose is whose, though, anymore? Is victory not both of theirs, when it has taken so long and been so hard fought? They are both down to two pieces each; a rook for him, a queen for her and kings hiding in corners from each other. Who takes whose king now seems immaterial, purely down to luck.

They might as well knock their pieces over and declare a draw. 

They do not, stubborn as they are. 

Instead they leave the board untended – two pieces staring down two pieces, until it has almost started to gather dust. 

In the cold air of a desert night, though, Jack reaches out to touch the board. A whispered confession, and over his king falls. 

It’s with a freeing sense of victory in defeat that Phryne finally moves her queen from the square in front, to reveal a king that has already toppled. 

The game is over, but at its climax, both players find that neither cares who won. 

  
  



	4. Books

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Steady me anytime, Inspector." - **M**

She doesn’t mean to fall on him (for him, either, but that passed moot so long ago it seems pointless dwelling on it), but the room is dark, the shelves are narrow, and she doesn’t see the book that has been left, out of place, ready to trip her. 

It’s a deceptively big drop, as well, and she finds herself remarkably grateful that he was there ready to catch her (as he always is, though they both know she’d never ask and hates to need it). What neither of them is ready for, is the way that gravity accelerates the fall so that when he does, he can only slow her momentum, cannot arrest it (when can he ever, she supposes). 

The two of them tumble, her protected in the circle of his arms, until they knock into another shelf and cause a shower of books to fall on them. Jack rolls her beneath him, keeping his back between her head and the raining literature, hands over his own. 

She doesn’t know why it’s now, in this moment – when books are far from the most dangerous thing they’ve faced – but once the bookshelf’s final projectile has thudded its way to the ground, somewhere in the following silence their lips meet. 

Perhaps it’s the ridiculousness of it all – the idea that they could have been killed by something as harmless as books to the head, here, in a darkened library only a few miles from home. Perhaps it’s the darkness itself, or the way that his body is warm and heavy on top of hers, that she breathes heavily beneath him, her chest flush with his. 

Perhaps it is that they just cannot stop falling into each other. 

Either way the kiss is not just the simple joy of another narrow scrape. More, it is the inevitable collision of two magnets whose resistance has finally aligned their mismatched poles and brought them slamming into each other, stuck. 

The both of them move with such synchronised, unthinking passion that Phryne barely notices her skirt is around her waist until she feels his fingers grazing up her thighs, until his hand has slipped under the silk of her underwear to caress flesh that is achingly ready for him. 

She can’t see him completely, in the dark (something she almost regrets; she wants to see in detail the passion in his eyes, the light of ecstasy glittering in the ocean depths of his irises) but his mouth, where it worships her neck, whispers the same emotions she feels heavy in her chest in the reverent ardour of its kisses. 

He makes quick work of it, fingers setting a greedy pace that has her head falling to the floor beneath her, and her hips keening upwards to meet him thrust for thrust. She comes with only a soft gasp, shaking around his fingers, her own hand coming up to caress his cheek.

From what she can see, he looks a little shell shocked – as though he cannot believe he just took her apart with one hand on the floor of the State Library – and she grins, still somewhat breathless. 

“Good catch,” she murmurs, and he swallows thickly.

“I just… I was only going to steady you,” he stutters, and she tugs him back down to her, capturing his lips again. 

“Well if that’s what we’re calling it, then steady me anytime, Inspector.”

  
  



	5. Knit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Hugh enlist in WWII. Dot handles it by knitting - **G**  
>   
>  This is definitely only 500 words I don't know what you mean.  
> 

For one couple, it’s a screaming argument, shouts and pleas – and even the odd accusation of betrayal, abandonment, desertion – hurled across the kitchen. 

The other stands in the parlour, facing each other but eyes cast in the direction of the muffled disagreement. 

Phryne sniffs, wipes angrily at the single tear that has escaped, and turns to Jack. 

“I’m coming after you,” she states, leaving no room for argument in her tone. 

Jack’s jaw clenches and unclenches. He sighs, nods, weaves his fingers through hers. “I know.”

.

By the time they leave, Dot has knitted each of them a complete winter wardrobe. Neither have the heart to tell her they cannot take the half of it with them, but they both make a point of putting on the scarves when they go. 

The day they ship out, each Collins child finds themselves with a brand new pair of mittens. 

Phryne sits and watches each stitch with her knees tucked under her chin, the taste of Jack still on her tongue, the sight of him staring back at her from the slowly disappearing ship burnt into the back of her eyes. 

.

She cannot risk flying – the chances of getting shot down too high even for her own daredevilish nature – and so she is forced to wait for the next boat with space that she can persuade someone to let her on, civilian as she is. 

It costs her two hundred pounds, but she knows it will be worth every penny to no longer be sitting and waiting. 

Their news comes in sporadic updates, and it is always unpredictable. Dot and the children move into Wardlow. Phryne hates their noise, but Dot’s presence gives her comfort. 

She takes to holding the yarn. 

.

By Christmas, the parlour has a new rug. It fits with none of the decor and has patches of odd colour or frayed wool here and there where Dot has let the children help. 

Phryne loves it more than anything else in the room – each stitch a marker for a time she knows they had been safe. The row of green squares, they had arrived in London, the row of blue, they were encamped. The odd little pink stitch Mary had proudly claimed to be a flower, they had sent word to wish her happy birthday.

Phryne has never seen the appeal of knitting (nor spent all that much time on it since wealth stopped her needing to), but she finds it now almost as comforting to be around as Dot seems to find it to do. 

.

When Hugh’s telegram comes to report the bombing, though – to report the dead, the injured, the _missing_ – Dot hands Phryne the needles. 

She takes them with her when she finally boards her ship, and by the time the voyage is done half the crew have new scarves. 

She uses them once more after that, somewhere in France when they just happen to be what her hands come across, to stab a man in the shoulder. 

.

After it is all over, all four of them home, safe, together – Phryne finally hands them back. 

Her house has been adorned with far more woollen soft furnishings in her absence – even the piano stool has received a new cover – but Dot sets them gently to one side. 

“I think I’m done with knitting, miss.”

Phryne smiles at her, and tightens her fingers around Jack’s where she has found herself unable to let go since he walked back through their door. 

“So am I, Dot.”

But she keeps the rug. 

  
  



	6. Plaits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you trust me?" - **G**

“Do you trust me?”

“No.”

Phryne rolls her eyes. “You need to stop talking to your mother, she’s a bad influence.”

“Funny,” the small girl hums. “She says the same about you.”

At that she lets out an incredulous laugh, shaking her head. “You know I’d think that after all these years – and all the times I’ve saved her life – she might be a _little_ more grateful.”

“I’m not sure gratitude has anything to do with it, my dear,” Jack adds from across the room, though he doesn’t stir from his book. She shoots him a look anyway, knowing he’ll see it. 

Phryne looks back down at where the child is blinking up at her. She has Hugh’s face, for the most part, but Mary’s eyes are Dots right down to the consternation. Her tiny brow has the same furrow that she has seen on her dear friend’s a thousand times before. 

It is almost comical, on a six-year-old. 

“What is grat-tude?” she demands, and Phryne purses her lips. This is one of the many parts of child rearing (and children, in general, their existence and their presence and their nature) that she struggles to understand the appeal of. 

Explanations are exhausting. 

“It’s what I’ll feel when you stop asking questions and let me finish your hair, darling,” she hums back, and she doesn’t miss the way Jack’s lips quirk up in the corner of her vision. 

“But I don’t _want_ ponytails. Mummy always does plaits.”

“Well, Auntie Phryne does ponytails – take it or leave it.” She folds her arms across her chest, and stares her down. 

She has all of Dot’s stubbornness as well – that hard formed, Catholic resolve, with all the Collins family’s latent protestant rigidity. Phryne cannot help but be mildly amused by the way she folds her own arms across herself in return. 

She is precocious, she will give her that. 

“What if you give me ponytails and then the baby doesn’t recognise me?” Mary asks, and Phryne feels her mouth pop open in surprise at this, casting a glance back to Jack. He looks up – at her, down to the child, back again. 

He grins. 

“She has a point there, Auntie Phryne.”

Phryne glares daggers at him. 

“Why doesn’t Uncle Jack do it, then? If plaits are so important?” she challenges, hands on her hips as she narrows her eyes at him. 

Jack chuckles, holding up his hands in defeat. “Uncle Jack concedes that ponytails might be more practical, on this occasion.” He turns to the child. “I wouldn’t argue if I were you, Mary, your Aunt P is a fearsome opponent.”

Phryne continues to glare at him – he knows how much she despises being named like her own aunt. “Thin ice, my darling,” she warns, and he rises from his chair to plant a kiss on her temple. 

“If I take over am I forgiven?” 

“Perhaps,” she hums. Then looks down to Mary, eyebrow raised in question, before looking back at him. “That depends if you can plait.”


	7. Help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mac helps Phryne through a difficult medical procedure - **T**  
>   
>  (This one's a little angstier again, my apologies, fluffier times ahead)  
> 

Nothing works. 

None of the medicines, the concoctions, the strange exercises. 

Not even the stairs – though that leaves her with bruises that ache for weeks after it’s all taken care of, anyway. 

She doesn’t like to ask Mac, doesn’t like to put her dear friend in the position – but she has also run out of other options. 

Mac sits at her kitchen table with her head in her hands, eyes fixed on the glass of whiskey in front of her. 

“I’ve tried everything,” Phryne tells her from the opposite chair. “You know I wouldn’t ask if I hadn’t.”

“No, I can see you’ve tried everything,” Mac snaps, eyeing the bruises that peak out at her collar. “Unless those were his parting gifts, too.”

It’s a cruel thing to say, knowing what she’s been through with him, but she knows her friend is lashing out only from her fear. 

She will say yes, Phryne knows she will, but she will hate it. 

“You might die,” Mac says, then, looking up. “I might _kill_ you, Phryne.” 

“You might not,” she shoots back with a smirk, though even she knows it won’t reach her eyes. 

Mac’s eyes fall closed, and she lets out a tortured breath. 

“Give me three days,” she sighs. “I’ll need to get some things from the hospital. I'm not doing this without antiseptic – or _morphine_.”

“Won’t hear me complaining about that,” Phryne quips.

They each pick up their glasses and drink in silence, neither looking at the other. Later, though, when they have moved from the kitchen to Mac’s small parlour, she reaches out and squeezes her hand, eyes full of sympathy. 

“We’ll sort it,” she tells her, and Phryne finds she has the utmost faith that they will. 

.

The worst part of it all, really, is afterwards – when Mac refuses to let her go anywhere. 

“I assure you, haemorrhaging and dying would be far worse than a few days in bed,” she insists, and Phryne hates to admit it, but that logic is sound. 

She’s not sure Mac takes a good deep breath again for another two weeks, when she is still free of infection, and her blood seems miraculously determined to remain within her body. 

When she is allowed up and about again, the first thing Phryne does is hug her. 

Tightly, arms around her waist and crushing her friend to her. 

“You should be careful – don’t overexert yourself, yet,” Mac scolds into her hair, though her arms wrap around her just as fiercely in response. 

“Thank you,” Phryne breathes. “Thank you for doing this for me, Mac.”

Mac pulls back to look her in the eye. “Thank you for not dying,” she replies, then squeezes an arm, gently.

It happens to be right over a bruise, though, and Phryne winces. 

Mac rolls her eyes. “Next time come to me before you try the stairs, though, will you?”

Phryne chuckles, pulling Mac back into her and sighing in relief – though she finds resolve settling in her gut that there will be no next time. 

Much to both of their relief, there never is. 


	8. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bert finally accepts Jack - **G**

The first Phryne knows of any of it is the cabbies spilling into her kitchen covered in blood and jabbering excitedly about how someone had, in no uncertain terms, been shown precisely where they should shove it. 

“That’ll teach ‘em – bloody brilliant!” Bert grins, then the both of them stop short as they notice that she is standing in the doorway staring at them, brow arched in question.

“Shit,” Cec exclaims as they see her, and Bert slaps a hand to his chest.

“So,” Phryne asks, eyeing their bloodied attire, “is it yours? Should I call Mac – or perhaps I should be calling the Inspector?”

“Oh, no need, miss, it’s mainly his blo– ”

Bert’s hand curls into a fist and thumps into Cec’s ribs, knocking the air from the end of his sentence. 

Phryne feels panic curl in her stomach. 

“It's what?” she demands, the words sharp. 

Bert clears his throat. “There was a bit of a punch up down the old pub – nothing to do with us, of course. Bunch of loudmouth society types who couldn’t hold their damn beer,” he grumbles. 

“Would have ended up with glass in me eye, though, if the Inspector hadn’t arrived,” he continues. “He arrested every one of those toff bastards, and had ‘em marched down the station for a cooling off. Best thing I’ve seen in years.”

He laughs, and Phryne blinks – utterly perplexed, deeply concerned. 

“You said that was _his_ blood?” she asks, trying to keep her voice steady, and some of the humour falls from Bert’s face. 

“Well, yes,” he adds, clearing his throat, “came a cropper of a bottle in the process – we took him to the hospital, though.”

“You did?” 

He shrugs, “Least we could do, I reckon – fair’s fair.”

“And is he there now?” Phryne demands, trying to ignore the way the panic is slowly clawing its way up her throat. 

“The doc’s stitching him up, Miss Fisher,” Cec replies to this. “No need to worry.”

She is worried, though – she finds she can’t help it. 

Clearly, this shows.

Bert rounds the table, puts a hand on her arm. “Looks worse than it is,” he tells her, oddly gentle. “He’ll be fine – we took ‘im straight there.”

She smiles, grateful (if confused). “Thank you,” she says, and Bert clears his throat, folding his arms across his chest and looking at the ground. 

“Yeah, well,” he hesitates, then, “he’s a good bloke.”

Phryne’s eyes widen a little at this, and she cannot help but smirk. 

“Never thought I’d hear you say that about a copper, Bert,” she teases, and he rolls his eyes. 

“Must have hit me head,” he shoots back. 

When Jack is out of hospital, though – cleared of concussion, stitched up neatly by Mac’s careful hand, and everything is settled again – Bert is the first to buy him a pint. 

Phryne notes, too (with not a little silent glee) that she never hears him refer to Jack as anything other than 'Inspector' again.

  
  



	9. Cheat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shared whiskey over draughts - **M** (purely for arguments sake, it barely counts)

“Cheat.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!” he scoffs – but when she grins at him over her whiskey glass he returns it, and this is when she first knows he’s hooked. 

.

“We can stop,” his voice is gentle as he examines her across the board. “If you’re too tired, we don’t have to play.”

“No,” she replies, shaking off the melancholy to focus on the task at hand and that alone. “No, I need to take my mind off it, please?” 

He takes a long breath, considering, then nods, taking his lead from her. 

This is when she first knows _she_ is hooked. 

.

“Will there be anything else, miss?” Mr. Butler asks, and she can barely bring herself to look up, eyes fixed on the empty board before her. 

“No,” she sighs, glancing at him with what she tries to make a smile but she’s sure is just a grimace. “Thank you, Mr. Butler.” 

She returns to her whiskey in silence.

This is when she realises she had been half-reeled in. Now she is on a line, above the water, floundering.

.

The game happens mostly in silence, their attention focused on their pieces and the whiskey that slips down far easier than it should. 

Their equilibrium is disturbed, but piece by literal piece they are putting it back. 

It’s as she watches his hands shake, ever-so-slightly, over the board as they reconcile over friendly competition, that she realises that maybe he has been floundering, too. 

.

The pieces scatter to the ground, discarded in a frantic scramble of hands as they pull at clothes and claw at skin. 

He whispers filthy promises into the curve of her neck, hands pushing loosened fabric from her shoulders and roaming over the skin that the movement leaves exposed. 

He hums sweet nothings to her as she shivers with release around him, cradled in his lap, skin slicked with sweat and sticky with whiskey where their haste has spilt it over them. 

He smiles into their languid kisses, one hand stroking down her back. “That’s _definitely_ cheating.” 

“Is not.”

“Is too – and I demand a rematch.” 

This is when she knows she has no desire to ever return to the ocean. 


	10. Fetch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fatima, the camel, runs away - **G**

She wakes up feeling satisfied. Not merely sated, but a bone-deep satisfaction that ripples through her and warms her from head to toe despite the cold desert air. 

The warm body beside her doesn’t hurt either, but then so much of her pleasure comes from the fact that he _isn’t_ just a warm body. He is not just another of many – enjoyable, enjoyed, then gone. The joy of Jack is something she never could have foreseen, something new. 

Whoever would have thought that the capture could be just as thrilling. 

She only realises when she shifts her head up to examine his face that he is awake, too, and his eyes have been fixed on her whilst hers were on the place her hand sits on his chest. 

She cannot help but grin at him, the action almost involuntary where it spreads itself across her face. “Hello, Jack.”

His answering smile is nothing short of resplendent – a wide and unencumbered joy that she’s barely seen there before. She realises, with a little flutter of warmth in her stomach, that when she has, it’s always been directed at her. 

“Good morning, Miss Fisher.” 

She rolls her eyes at the formality; so ridiculous given circumstances, yet the sound of it springs nothing but fondness for him to her chest. 

She’s halfway to kissing him, to surrendering herself back into the luxurious warmth of his embrace, when she hears the crash – followed by an odd braying sound, and the both of them startle upright. 

It’s followed by the rhythmic galumphing of a run – the kind made on four legs, not two – and Phryne worries she knows its source before she even rises to check. 

She leaps from the bed, Jack close behind, one hand reaching for a robe and shrugging into it as she runs. She reaches the entrance of the tent just in time to see Fatima’s rear end disappear over the nearest dune. 

She turns to where the other camel (they never discovered his name, but she’s fondly referred to him in her mind as Abdullah, in memory of their wayward camelier) sits innocently, as though nothing has happened. 

He waits to make eye contact with her, then he rises himself, and runs after his mate. 

“Jack!” she exclaims but says nothing else before she takes off running herself. She’s not altogether sure what good it will do – the likelihood of outrunning a camel in sand is slim to none – but she feels the need to try, nevertheless.

Behind her, unseen, Jack stares motionless for a moment, shocked. Then he disappears into the tent to fetch some trousers and quickly races after her. 

He catches her just below the far peak of the dune, almost barrelling into her back. She has stopped, watching the camels where they now plod calmly back towards them, Fatima in front, Abdullah behind. 

Phryne cocks her head to one side, watching them in confusion. 

“I think he went to fetch her,” she states, bemused. 

Jack cannot help but chuckle at the idea. “Well, thank goodness she allowed herself to be fetched.” 

At this she turns, shoots him a look, then allows it to descend into a smile. She reaches for his hand, slipping her fingers into his as they stand and watch the camels return. 

“Thank goodness, indeed.”


	11. Boys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne and Jane have a heart to heart about boys - **G**

Jane always was precocious – it’s part of the reason Phryne took her in in the first place, that spark. 

Still, she finds it more than a little confronting when – out of the blue one Saturday during breakfast – she looks up from her omelette with a furrow in her brow and asks, “Why don’t you and the Inspector just get married?”

Phryne chokes on the bite of toast she’s just taken.

She takes a sip of tea, licking her lips before turning to her daughter, one eyebrow raised. “And why would we do that?”

Jane has at least the decency to look slightly abashed, eyes dropping back to her fork where it pushes egg around the plate. 

“Well,” she says, then looks up again, eyes burning with the question. “You’re in love, aren’t you? So, I don’t understand why you don’t just… get married?”

Phryne swallows, a soft laugh falling from her that she pretends to herself isn’t nervous. “What makes you think we’re in love, Jane?”

Jane’s frown deepens. “Well _aren’t_ you?” 

Phryne opens her mouth, ready to deny the allegation, to laugh it off and change the subject. Only, once her lips have parted, she finds that she cannot seem to form the words. 

Her feelings for Jack are… well, _complicated_. She’s only just coming to terms with what they might or mightn’t be herself – but denying them outright doesn’t feel right, somehow. 

“Even if we were, Jane,” she sidesteps, instead, “That wouldn’t mean we had to get married.”

Jane puts down her fork, chewing on her lip for a moment. “Why wouldn’t you, though? If you love him?”

Phryne turns in her chair to face her better. “Love is more than marriage, Jane. I know that it’s what a lot of people want – and if you decide it’s what _you_ want, then that’s wonderful. It isn’t what I want, though, it never has been.”

Jane tilts her head to the side, obviously contemplating something. “So, you don’t have to marry someone? Even if you love them?”

“Absolutely not.” 

“Does it mean you love them less?” 

She smiles, wide and warm. “Not a jot. Marriage is simply a way some people choose to express their love, but sometimes people who are very much in love never even get a chance to tell each other – or choose not to, for whatever reason. How you choose to act on what you feel doesn’t necessarily reflect the depth of it.”

“So,” Jane replies, “if a boy tells you he loves you more than another boy because _he_ wants to marry you – he’s lying?” 

Phryne grins, folding her arms across herself and fixing the girl with a knowing look. “Perhaps, perhaps not – but in my experience any boy who feels the need to express his love by trying to act superior to other boys isn’t really worth the time, anyway.”

“No,” Jane hums. “No, I thought as much.” With this she picks up her fork, and returns to her omelette. 

Several minutes later, though, she pipes up again. 

“ _Do_ you love the Inspector, though, miss?”

Phryne picks up her teacup again, bringing it to her mouth to hide her smirk. “Eat your breakfast, Jane,” she replies from over the rim, and Jane returns to her eggs with a small smile on her face that says she thinks she knows the answer, anyway. 

They both know the answer, really. 

One of these days, she might even check whether Jack does, too.

  
  



	12. Bath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Phryne read D.H.Lawrence in the bathtub - **M/E**

The book gets wet.

Phryne hates to see something as precious as her D.H. Lawrence get ruined, but she also had not been expecting company – had she then she might have chosen something a little more chaste to entertain herself with. 

The problem is that when Jack comes home, tired and dejected from another fruitless day in court, she can hardly sit there and luxuriate whilst he broods alone. 

In her defence, she offers to vacate so that he can wash away the pains of the day in peace, should that be what he needs – but he shakes his head at the suggestion, the smallest smile teasing at the edges of his frustration. 

His hands slide around her waist as he settles himself behind her, head falling to her shoulder, lips against her skin – though unmoving – eyes falling closed. 

She presses a kiss to his hair, then leans her weight back against him, sighing softly, enjoying his added warmth, and returns to her book. 

It’s only after several minutes have passed that she realises – lulled as she is by the steamy heat of the bath, the heady scents of the salts, the slowly building arousal in the pit of her stomach – that Jack’s eyes have reopened. He has lifted his head to read over her shoulder, and the fingers of his right hand have slipped down through the water to the join of her hip, tickling absent patterns against her skin. 

And she is wet, quite regardless of the water. 

Her breath hitches, and she leans backwards, head falling back onto his shoulder. He leans back too, steadying himself against the edge of the tub, pulling her with him. He splays his left hand across her stomach, holding her in place, and the fingers of his right slide further down, slipping through her folds and teasing her entrance until she is trembling with anticipation for him. 

Her eyes flutter shut as he slips a finger inside her, letting out a low moan, hips canting up to meet it, her body meeting resistance from the hand on her abdomen. 

He shushes her, a tickling breath into her ear. “Let me do this for you.”

She nods, understanding. He has failed, today, to seek justice. He has failed in a way that she knows eats at him. He can do this, though, he can bring her pleasure; can feel brief purpose again in her joy. She lets her legs fall further apart, and closes her eyes. He continues to fuck her gently with one finger until she is panting, grinding herself against it with tiny rolls of her hips that she cannot suppress in her need. 

Finally, she feels the glorious friction of a second. She brings her free hand around to his face, turning it towards her so that she can reach up and kiss him. He kisses back hungrily, his fingers curling inside her. 

The hand on her stomach slides down until his middle finger is at her clitoris, and he starts to trace it with firm, circular motions that have her gasping. 

He lowers his mouth to bite a kiss into her neck, and pinches her clit once, hard. 

She drops the book. 

  
  



	13. Aunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phryne and Jack become godparents to Dot and Hugh’s first child - **G**
> 
> This is...not 500 words. I tried, I swear.

“I know you don’t like children.” The sentence is spilt out in a hurry, a tumbling continuation of sounds that can barely be classified as individual words. 

Phryne raises an eyebrow, looking from Dot’s flushed face to her swollen stomach and back again. 

“I’ll like yours, Dot,” she says with a smile. “Because it’ll be yours. I admit, until it can speak I won’t be all that _interested_. That doesn’t mean I won’t like it, though.” 

Dot bites her lip, looking down at her bump, one hand moving to stroke at it fondly, then she looks up again, her expression tentative but hopeful. 

“I want you to be the godmother,” she murmurs, “but I wasn’t sure if you’d want that.” 

Phryne’s breath catches, and her lips curl up at the corners. She reaches for Dot’s hand, taking her fingers and squeezing gently.

“I would be honoured, Dot.”

Relief floods her face, her own mouth turning into a smile. “Oh, really?” she exclaims, “You’ll do it?”

Phryne nods, smiling wider. “Of course. You’re family – you and Hugh – and your children will be, too.”

Dot’s own smile grows, the joy spreading across her face and making her eyes glisten. 

“I can’t wait,” she admits, tone almost shy. “But I’m so nervous.” 

Phryne squeezes her fingers tighter. “You’ll be wonderful,” she tells her, and means it wholeheartedly. “And whatever happens, you’ll never be alone.” 

.

“Phryne?”

She blinks against her ridiculous tears, turning to where Jack is standing in the doorway, head tilted to one side in concern. He comes to take a seat on the chaise beside her, one hand slipping onto her knee. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks after a moment’s silence, and she sniffs and turns to face him. 

“Did Hugh speak to you?” 

Jack frowns. “Yes, I… you’ve spoken to Dot?” 

She nods. 

“And you’re… unhappy about it?” The words are measured and unsure, thumb rubbing circles into the fabric of her trousers.

“No… no, it’s not that it’s…” She sighs, wondering how best to articulate it. 

“I don’t want children, Jack.”

“Best tell Jane, then,” he quips, and she shoots him a withering look. 

“That’s different. I’ve never wanted to have my own children, raise them.” 

The confusion on Jack’s brow deepens, tinged with a hint of panic that she can’t help but be amused by. 

“I still _don’t_ ,” she clarifies, and the panic retreats again. “But I always… when I was young, I did always think I’d be an aunt, one day.” 

She sees it start to dawn behind his eyes, though realisation seems to hit his fingers first, which tighten where they sit on her knee as she continues. 

“Janey’s favourite game was always mothers and babies. I used to insist we played it on a pirate ship because otherwise I found it dreadfully boring.” She smiles at the memory. “But she… I think she would have been a lot like Dot, if she’d had the chance to be. I think she would have grown up and been a wonderful mother.” 

“Well, you would have been a wonderful aunt,” Jack whispers. “A terrible influence,” he adds, and she chuckles. “But wonderful all the same.” 

“I would have quite liked that, I think,” she admits, quiet, and she assumes he knows it’s not about the children. 

“Well, you’ll make a fine godmother – and I’m sure Dot will be in constant need of your support.”

Of course he knows it’s not about the children. 

“She’s going to be a wonderful mother.”

“She is,” Jack agrees. “You’re who she’ll want on the days she doesn’t feel like one, though.” 

Phryne nods, takes a breath, then wipes away the remaining dampness in her lashes. “I suppose I can handle that,” she says with a smile. 

She has no sister anymore, and she will never be an aunt – but she does have a Dot, and she’ll be quite happy to settle for godmother. 


	14. Roots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Innocent bystanders get caught up in Phrack’s “closeness.” - **G**
> 
> This... does not actually fill the prompt. Whatsoever. It's also a poem, not a drabble. I have no excuses other than quarantine has made my brain go bye-bye and this is legitimately just what came out of me when I tried to think about what to write. It ended up frightfully generic, too, but it was _inspired_ by Phrack, so I hope it'll still do as an offering.

‘Twixt two trees lie many things,  
Though oftentimes unseen  
Branch may shy from branch’s touch  
And quite alone they’ll seem.

Beneath their widening canopies  
though, life may bloom and rise  
The shelter of their non-embrace  
A shield from harsh, bright skies.

Their leaves might filter sunlight  
So those below don’t burn  
And in their quiet oasis, safe,  
their shaded shrubs will learn.

They’ll reach out their own branches  
Turn leaf and twig to sun  
‘Til they are grown and standing tall  
Their need for guarding done. 

And beside them stand their wardens  
Two trees who seem alone  
Yet underneath their blooming shrubs  
In silence, roots have grown.

Their branches may spread separate,  
Their leaves be different shades  
But where their roots have tangled  
This separation fades.

It may lie below the surface  
Their twining touch untold  
But two trees, however separate–  
seeming, can together mold. 

Then, once their roots have married,  
At last branch might join branch  
The final distance closing, soft,  
Around their guarded plants.

Where once two trees stood, lonely,  
Their leaves afraid to brush  
Now spreading branches intertwine  
Their anchored roots still flush.

The canopy spreads wider, though  
As they stand now with their wards  
Who tower, tall and noble,  
Whose own proud branches soar.

‘Twixt two trees there seemed no love  
The space seemed far between  
Yet now there lies a forest there,  
A blooming stretch of green.

The gaps between their branches, see,  
(enough for light to shine)  
Were gifts to those below them  
Whilst they needed space to climb.

All the while, though – secret, hush  
Those twisting roots did grow  
For ‘twixt two trees lie many things  
They simply lie unknown. 


	15. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack teases out a secret from Phryne, one that he would never have guessed - **T**
> 
> A sort of sequel to 'Help'
> 
> I sorta wiggled away from the prompt a bit, but hey ho. Also, some people might say that this is not 500 words. I say, OH MY GOD WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE HOLY SHIT WOULD YOU JUST _LOOK_ AT THAT. HEAVENS. Anyway, how's isolation treating you?

She never talks about him, and Jack doesn’t ask. Not because he isn’t curious, or wouldn’t be happy (maybe happy is the wrong word, given the subject matter, but _willing_ at least) to hear, but because she never appears to want to – and it is far from his place to coax it out of her should that be the case.

History is that, after all, and he understands if she’d want it to stay that way. 

That’s why – if he had known – he might have chosen a different scar. 

They pick them slowly, taking turns, fingers ghosting over raised skin in the blissful heat of afterglow – quiet questions they can choose to answer or ignore. Never pressured, never expectant, just gently curious. 

She has unravelled almost all of his war stories thus; discovered bicycle accidents, boyhood fights, constabulary mishaps. There are scant few he has passed on, and she has been equally forthcoming – such that he already knows, from the map of silent scars she passes – precisely where they’re from. 

She doesn’t talk about it, though, and he never wants her to feel she must. 

It’s why it shocks him, guilt tugging at his gut, when his fingers land on one he has questioned long but never asked on, and her fingers come to trail over his, staring at the jagged white line on her thigh with eyes that glaze over in remembered pain, and whispers, “Will you still love me if I tell you?”

Jack startles, knows immediately who this must be about.

He opens his mouth, ready to tell her she doesn’t have to, ready to change the subject, to choose another one, end the game – but when his eyes travel to her face she is looking at him again, blue eyes burning. 

There’s something in her that says she wants to – that she has been waiting for him to ask so that she can finally tell. So he nods, settling his fingers over the mark, clearing his throat. 

“Nothing you could say would change that, Phryne.”

She stares back at him, searching, curious, then her eyes drift back to his fingers. 

“It’s from when I was pregnant,” she murmurs, and Jack thinks his heart stops beating, mind still working through that confession as she continues, “From when I threw myself down a flight of stairs to try and rid myself of it, and my leg caught on loose carpet spikes.”

Phryne swallows, fingers dancing across the backs of his knuckles, then looks back at him. “Well?” she asks, matter-of-fact, though something fearful lurks in her gaze. 

“Did it work?” he asks, instead. He’s relatively certain she would have mentioned if she’d given up a bastard babe, relatively certain he might have seen the signs of it on her body – but he isn’t _sure_. He knows he will not mind, either way, would never blame her for battled demons past, but he still finds himself alarmed to know he might have missed a ghost this substantial. 

“I can’t tell you that without throwing a mutual friend of ours onto legally questionable ground.”

Mac, then. 

Jack finds himself (not for the first time) relieved that Phryne has such a good friend in the doctor. He strokes a finger down the raised line, thumb ghosting across the smooth skin beside it. 

He will not ask if it was his, because the haunting behind her expression answers the question already. He will not coax anything further than she is willing to freely give. 

Instead he leans down, captures her lips, lifts his free hand to drag fingers featherlight across her cheek.

“Remind me to thank her for not killing you,” he whispers into their kiss – and she chuckles, soft. 

“I seem to recall her thanking me for not dying, at the time,” she breathes. She pulls back, though, fingers rising to his face, cupping his cheek to hold him there, look into his eyes. “Jack…” 

“I love you,” he interrupts, though, not wanting her to feel the need to ask. “Scars included.”

The ghosts exorcise themselves from her face, and her mouth ticks up at the corner, eyes glistening as her fingers move to run down his bare back, seeking, mapping. 

“Your turn,” she whispers, and Jack smiles back. He’s sure she’s found most of them now, but he will never tire of her fingers on him, anyway. Will never tire of how whole he feels when she looks at his missing pieces. 

History is that, and he understands if she’d want it to stay that way – often he does, too – but he will never tire of this slow exchange of bygone demons, never tire of the ghosting touches, reminding each other it’s alright to be haunted. 

He will never tire of loving her, whole, regardless of what has been lost to scars. 


	16. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t believe you remembered.”/ Jack loses his sibling and Phryne is there to help him - **G**
> 
> My brain and I have had a major falling out, I'm still not speaking to her, but I'm trying to rally for the last week of the challenge and strike out on my own, brainless. We'll see how it goes.  
>    
> 

There are hundreds of moments it could have happened – hundreds of moments it probably _should_ have happened – at the climaxes of disaster or in the comfortable quiets of conversational lulls. In wordless exchanges as they hunt down killers, heated looks as they share drinks, soft brushes of physical contact as they divulge secrets. 

Oh, there have been countless occasions when he should have realised.

He has, in his mind, often sat and likened the glittering excitement in her eyes to the constellations of the night sky. He has felt her fingers where they flutter over his lapels or his arms or his shoulder blades and thought that her touch might just, in fact, hold some secret panacea – if only because of how it grounds him, calms him, soothes the invisible ache he never notices was hurting until it disappears beneath her fingertips.

Sometimes, he watches the afternoon sun catch in her hair, lighting the darkness of it with a soft glow, casting her almost as inhuman, otherworldly, ethereal. Then she will say something wicked or pensive, then her eyes will brighten with merriment or cast over with remembered pain, and he will be reminded that she is more human than anyone he has ever met – and that that is where her true beauty lies. 

Often, he watches the corner of her mouth as she smiles – radiant, joyous, room-lighting ones or secret, coy, smirks (reserved, so often now it seems, only for him) – the kind is irrelevant, though, as he cherishes each one just the same. He bathes in the sound of her laughter, delights in her conversation, aches with her pains. 

In any and all of these moments, Jack really should have noticed that he is hopelessly (perhaps irrevocably) in love with her. 

It happens in none of them, though.

Instead, it comes shortly after he opens his door to find her there, with an outstretched bottle of whiskey and a sympathetic smile, five years to the day since he lost his brother – yet less than a year since he has known her. 

“I know you probably don’t want to talk about it,” she tells him, serious, “but I thought that you might not want to be alone.”

He stares back at her, speechless, and her expression turns as close to shy as he might ever have seen it.

“I can go, though, if you do?”

Jack shakes his head – whatever grief he is feeling, he cannot imagine it will be eased by sending her away from him. 

“I can’t believe you remembered,” he whispers, though, once the whiskey is poured. He is certain he has only mentioned the date once; thus she has either remembered from that one brief, pained conversation, or else she has taken it upon herself to check. 

Yet, when she looks back at him, it’s with a face full of genuine surprise. “Jack,” she replies, gentle, though the word is still softly chiding, “you ridiculous man.”

There have been countless occasions he should have realised how utterly he adores Phryne Fisher, but the epiphany comes, finally, in an admonishment whispered over expensive whiskey, afternoon sunlight in her hair, a smirk in the corner of her mouth, remembered pain in her eyes. 

“As if I’d ever forget.”


	17. Alley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phrack are being chased, one pulls the other into an alley - and then realizes how close they are - **M**
> 
> Rules are oppressive and made to be broken anyway so does it _really_ matter if I'm giving up on keeping things under 500 words? I say no. Or rather, the prompts are saying no. Emphatically.

It happens in something of a blur – from being discovered snooping through boxes, to the chase that ends abruptly with her slipping her hand into Jack’s to tug him back and to the left, into a tiny alleyway that no one would think to search lest they knew it was there. 

“Shortcut,” she tells his questioning glance, and her confidence that the move was the right one is rewarded when sounds of their smugglers giving up float through the quiet night air towards them. 

She turns her head to grin at Jack – in victory and smugness both – but finds he is already looking at her, eyes fixed on her face, breathing heavy. 

She hadn’t realised she’d tugged him so very close against her, but now she is pinned between Jack and the wall, hands holding him so that he cannot easily retreat.

For once, though, he looks like the thought hadn’t even occurred – something hungry in his gaze that spurs her into action before either of them can come to their senses. She lets go of his arms and moves her hands to his hips, pulling him close to eliminate the remaining space between them.

“Phryne,” he breathes, a hot exhalation against her lips – but where she’d have suspected a warning, instead she hears a plea. 

She kisses him, open mouthed and full of intent, tugging his bottom lip between her teeth and letting her hands weave around his neck, fingers sliding into his hair. He meets her with all the same enthusiasm, pushing her against the cold stone, fingers trailing down to her thighs.

“Jack,” she gasps, as he gathers up the material of her skirt, dipping a hand beneath the hem, one finger tracing along the top of her stocking and sending a delighted shiver down her spine. “We could wait until we’re home, you know,” she quips. There’s nothing she’d like less, in this moment – the warmth of his hands on her a delightful juxtaposition to the cool night air – yet she cannot help but tease. 

Jack’s carefully guarded passion is such a constant wonder to her that it feels like a gift every time he succumbs to it. 

“Is that what you want?” he asks, low, against her lips, his fingers trailing up the bare skin of her thigh, teasing along the silken edge of her knickers and then skimming beneath, hand travelling to palm the full curve of her backside and squeezing. “To wait?”

She answers him by reaching for his trousers, mouth moving to press kisses along his jaw as she frees him from the confines of the cloth.

“When,” she murmurs into his skin, as she teases him with a featherlight touch of her fingers, “have you ever known me want to wait?” 

“Good point,” he replies, the words breathy and ragged, and he pulls back to claim her lips again. His spare hand moves to hook the silk of her lingerie out of his way and then he moves, slow but sure. Phryne’s head falls back against the hard stone as she feels him enter her, and Jack takes the opportunity to move his mouth to her neck, worshipping the bared skin. 

Her hands fall to his hips, guiding him, moving her own to meet his thrusts needily, and she lets out a delighted gasp when his hand slides back to her thigh, lifting her up and changing their angle to stroke deeper inside her.

When she comes, it's with a quiet cry into the night, and Jack slows his pace, guiding her gently through it before retreating from her to gasp out his own release. 

Phryne reaches up to bring his mouth back to hers, thumb stroking down his jaw, and Jack smiles against her lips before pulling back to examine her with an unfettered glee that makes something flutter delightedly in her chest.

“We should take shortcuts more often,” he murmurs, and Phryne laughs.

She’s rather inclined to agree.


	18. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dot and Hugh become a family - **G**

“It won’t make it happen any faster, you know,” Jack tells her – and she doesn’t dignify the words with a response, focusing solely on her new mission to wear a hole in the rug by the fireplace and that alone. 

After several minutes more silent pacing, Phryne lets out a huff and stops, turning back to Jack. 

“ _Surely_ it must be over by now. How long can it possibly take?”

Jack smiles, standing and crossing the room to her, taking her hands between his. 

“A long time – certainly for new mothers, you know that.”

“I don’t know why we can’t be at the hospital,” she tells him, eyes hard, and he tilts his head at her, one eyebrow lifting. 

“You know _precisely_ why, Phryne.”

Phryne rolls her eyes. “Yes, well, Mac can find someone else to drink whiskey with until she apologises for that.”

“You were being a touch unreasonable, darling.” 

She glares at him.

“I don’t think it’s _unreasonable_ to want to be sure that my friend is receiving the best possible care for such a momentous occasion, is it?”

“I think it’s unreasonable to try and tell trained midwives how to do their jobs,” he replies with a smile that is still mildly sympathetic, and she turns back to the fireplace, pulling her hands from his. 

“I just want her to be alright, Jack,” she sighs, and feels his warmth as his arms slide around her waist, mouth coming to her ear. 

“I know – but she will be. Mac’s handling it.” 

Phryne takes a breath, trying to calm herself. She leans her head back against his shoulder and closes her eyes, focusing only on the grounding feel of him behind her, the warm weight of his arms around her. 

Then the phone rings, and her eyes fly open. 

.

“Told you she’d be fine,” Mac smirks and Phryne tries to glare but it loses its potency in her glowing joy as she stares at the Collinses, three where they had been two. 

The baby – Mary – is small and pink and (though she’d never say it to Dot) a little squashed-looking, but the happy tears that glisten in both parents' eyes make Phryne’s heart burst in happiness of her own. 

“Mary Elizabeth Jane Collins,” Dot whispers, eyes fixed on her daughter’s face before looking up to meet Phryne’s gaze where it has frozen on her friend. Dot shoots her a small, affirming smile and Phryne feels her breath catch. 

Jack’s hand slides into hers, voice low at her ear. “Are you crying?” he teases, gently, and she scoffs.

“Absolutely not,” she shoots back, without turning, and smiles back at her friend past the single trail of damp on either cheek. 

“Whatever you say.” His fingers tighten around hers, and she leans back into him, watching where Dot’s attention has returned to the child in her arms and Hugh watches the both of them, gaze adoring.

They leave the new family in peace shortly afterwards, retreating to Phryne’s parlour to toast them with relieved smiles.

“To family,” Phryne grins, clinking her glass to Jack’s then Mac’s, and feels the weight of the day's anxiety finally lift. Mother and child are well, and she doesn’t think she has ever seen her dear friend so happy. “And the Collinses.” A little family, all their own.

  
  



	19. Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A member of the MFMM family opens the door to find the last person on earth they’d expect to see - **G**

The first thing Phryne does on opening the door (not that she’s proud of it, but the reaction is wholly inadvertent – the simple result of shock, grief, confusion, all snowballed into one knee-jerk response) is throw it closed again with a slightly startled yelp, one hand moving to her mouth. 

She has no time for ghosts, today of all days, and if she’s losing her mind then she’d appreciate it waiting at least until the service is over and she can do so in privacy. 

She stands there, frozen, fingers against her lips – half waiting for the knock to come again and prompt her to open the door to a different face, to prove her insanity was only momentary. 

There is no knock, though – more in keeping with her theory of apparitions – and she takes a shaky breath before moving her fingers from skin to metal, clasping the handle and cracking the door open again to peer around it. 

He watches her, totally silent, a spectre seemingly all too aware of his own potential to spook. 

Phryne rakes her eyes over him, assessing, terrified, and just as silent. She pulls the door open wider, heart thudding in her ears – though keeps a careful hold on the handle, not quite trusting her own legs where she can no longer feel them beneath her. Her entire world seems to zero in on just him, cataloguing, questioning.

He must be a ghost (though either way she has lost her mind). 

He’s _wrong_ , she notes, though, as she takes him in. 

There is a large, angry scar that drags from above his right eye to his jaw, just below the ear, and continues down his neck, disappearing beneath the grubby collar of his uniform. His hair is unkempt, stubborn curls falling across his forehead (though unable to hide the deep set lines that sit there as he watches her watch him). He smells like oil and sweat, rather than the heady mix of sandalwood and pomade that she’d long ago come to think of as home. 

Yet his eyes – behind a terror that reflects her own, beneath an insecurity that hangs from a rope she realises might be strung from her own silence – still have life simmering somewhere in them. 

His wrongness somehow seems to make him right; make him real. 

Phryne’s fingers move without her, reaching up, feeling out the scar where it disappears into his collar. She traces it with the tips of her fingers, a featherlight touch but enough, just enough, to feel its jagged edges – to _believe_ it. Her fingers trail along the healing injury, up his neck, over his jaw, across his cheek. There is damp in the corner of his eye when her fingers find their way there that she brushes from him with a gentle sweep of her thumb.

Slowly, beneath the wandering pads of her fingers, he comes back to life – spectre becoming man. _Her_ man.

Her Jack.

She can still hear the steady thrumming of her heart in her ears, and she lowers her hand back to his neck, flattening it against the marred skin.

His own heartbeat answers her unspoken question.

Not a ghost.


	20. Perfume

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack or Phryne is investigating somewhere and can tell that the other was recently there by a telltale scent - **T**
> 
> ~~Hello, yes, we've moved on to crack now~~

If he could, Jack thinks he’d strangle Ivan Pavlov. 

Not that it’s his fault – more that he’s just the one who’d had the audacity to put forth the theory in the first place – and if he’d never heard of the man then Jack probably could have convinced himself it’s just coincidental. 

As it is, though, once he notices his own response he cannot un-notice – and this just happens to be the moment that finally undoes him. 

Really, he should blame Phryne. She’s the one insistent on sneaking up behind him (too close, always, for sanity) drenched in French perfume. 

She’s the one who trails hands across him, breath on his neck, voice in his ear – an all-sided assault on his senses that wouldn’t even be an issue if he didn’t know she was doing it on _purpose_.

He has never felt wanted the way Phryne appears to want him. It’s purely carnal, this he knows (and is exactly why he resists despite how much his body begs him to surrender). She doesn’t want him the way he wants her, doesn’t crave his heart the way she appears to crave his body.

It leaves them in an unconscionable stalemate; an intolerable impasse that neither of them seem well equipped to handle yet neither quite dares try and break. 

Still, she surrounds him in the sensation of her – her voice, her touch, her _scent_ – leaves him wondering, as each day passes, if he shouldn’t just rid himself of his heart somehow and let his head fall beneath her water. He is far from innocent, too. He strings her out, teases her with insincere promises, with looks filled with lust they both know he will not indulge in, with words that leave her gasping yet unsatisfied. 

She will not love him, though, and he will not simply fuck her. 

He repeats this to himself every day, a prayer he utters beneath his breath when her painted lips are so close he could fall on them, her breath a hot whisper of invitation across his skin. 

It works – right until it doesn’t; until one day he strolls into a crime scene and is caught, immediately, in her riptide. 

She isn’t even _there_ , but at the smell of French perfume he finds himself suddenly flushed beneath the collar, a tightness coiling in the pit of his stomach that he has to concentrate far too hard to try and dismiss. She appears to have come and gone yet he is still fighting the waves caused by the echoes of her presence. He’d have called it coincidence, but he knows better.

His body has betrayed him; carefully conditioned – quite without his noticing – to the very idea of her. By bloody French perfume.

God, but he wants her, though, and he is so tired of treading water.

Absolutely, he blames Pavlov – this is what he tells her when he pushes her against her own front door, when his mouth finds its way to her neck, tongue exploring the acidic trail of the perfume where it sits on her skin like a damn calling card. 

“What does Pavlov have to do with it?” she asks, the words breathless as he fumbles with the buttons of her trousers – but there is a glint in her eye, a smugness behind the breathlessness and Jack bites a kiss into her collar bone, nose pressed against her skin.

“You know damn well what,” he whispers, and she chuckles – though when he pulls back again there’s something gentle there, a joyous wonder that dawns slowly across her face that he hadn’t expected. It makes him wonder, suddenly, if maybe their wants aren't so different, after all.

“I’m glad you like the perfume, Jack,” she breathes.

And, finally, he lets himself drown.


	21. Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secret relationship ~~or fake dating~~ \- **T**

The problem is, really, that she just doesn’t know how to tell him. 

She’d been planning to the night her father interrupted them – and again, the following night, when her father’s nerve tonic had interrupted them. 

She’d even planned the night after that… when her father had interrupted them. 

Quite aside from murdering her father, Phryne finds herself at a loss as to how to move forward after that. 

And Compton doesn’t really help matters. 

It’s a mistake, she feels it (for perhaps the first time in her life) as it happens. She likes Compton, always has, and they’d had fun once – but she feels something break as she comes in his arms, like the distant sound of glass shattering – and she realises as she faces him down, half-naked in the company of a host of armed airmen, that she’s scared it might have been Jack’s heart. 

Then comes Concetta, and suddenly she finds herself wondering if there’s anything to tell anymore. Or rather, if there'd been anything to tell in the first place; if she had, in fact, been mistaken in her assumptions, had presumed to think their silent romance fact when it was fiction purely of her own making.

Because she had presumed to think Jack hers, yet she had also neglected to tell him this – and she fears, as she stares down an empty chair, that now she may have waited too long. 

He returns, though. Just as she finds despair settling on her, in he strides with a bottle of wine and a smile that says he’s hers – has been hers all along. 

Phryne takes him in, heart pounding in her ears in joy and relief, but the echoes of assumed heartache on her tongue, and decides she needs to be sure, either way. 

She springs from her chair the moment Mr. Butler has pulled the door shut, prying the bottle from Jack’s slightly stunned fingers and placing it on the nearest chair. Then she grabs him by the lapels and kisses him, firmly. 

Jack startles under her touch, freezing for a moment before responding with tentative enthusiasm. His hands move to her hips, and he pulls back just far enough to look her in the eye, questioning.

“Phryne,” he breathes, “Are you sure? I want this, you... _us –_ but only if you’re certain it’s what you want, too.”

At this, she cannot help but laugh – a relieved, almost manic chuckle – and she lifts a hand to his cheek, stroking the backs of her fingers across it and relishing the wonder that arises in his eyes at the movement. 

“Oh, Jack,” she whispers, “We’ve been us for so long already – I’ve just been trying to find the right time to tell you.”

His mouth falls open at this, a small furrow appearing between his brows. “What?”

Phryne rolls her eyes, stepping closer to press her body against his. When she looks up at him she injects all the honesty she can into her gaze.

She is, she realises, absolutely finished with their romance being secret from him alone. 

“You’ve had my heart a long time, Inspector – the only person who didn't notice is you.”


	22. Illusion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ~~Secret relationship or~~ fake dating - **M**
> 
> Because _as if_ I was ever going to do either or...   
> 

It’s purely bad luck that their landlady happens to be at the club.

Phryne sees her a thankful moment before she sees them (in a corridor they really have no other excuse to be down) – just long enough to push Jack up against the wall and kiss him. He freezes under her touch, but she sees him realise a second later, and then his fingers curl on her waist and his lips open under hers. 

Her eyes fall closed quite involuntarily, and she finds herself thoroughly distracted by how Jack has not only allowed the cautious exploration of her tongue, but his own has come to meet hers, to answer the questions of her movements with resounding yeses. 

When they part, it’s breathlessly, with eyes that are glazed with lust, and both of them realise that the landlady appears long gone with averted gazes and tiny smiles. 

The taste of him, though, the heat of his body where Phryne has not quite managed to pull herself back to a polite distance, coupled with the dark of the corridor, the way that the shadows appear to mask reality itself – send her melting back onto his mouth again before she remembers making the conscious decision to allow herself to.

To her delight, he accepts it, his hands pulling her back, closer to him. He allows her tongue to delve further into his mouth, her hands to roam across his chest and slide down until they find the fastenings of his trousers. When she brushes his cock through them Jack moans and pulls back. 

“Phryne,” he gasps, caught somewhere between cautioning and begging. She moves her mouth to his neck, licking and biting at the skin there until she teases another soft groan from him. 

“She might come back,” Phryne purrs, a questioning challenge. 

Jack lets out a shaky breath, but doesn’t push her away, and she takes this as a silent sign of permission, both hands moving to free Jack’s hardening cock from the confines of material between it and her wandering fingers. He lets out a slightly ragged gasp at her touch, eyes falling closed.

“She might not,” he murmurs, an answering argument, but there is blessed little conviction in it. 

Phryne drops to her knees, smirking up at him where he has opened his eyes to stare back down at her, breathless. 

“True,” she breathes, blowing the word across his exposed skin, a whisper of hot breath that makes him twitch. “But what do you say we keep up the illusion just in case, Mr. Fisher-Robinson?”

Jack says nothing, only nods, and Phryne settles her hands on his thighs, relishing the moan of pleasure that escapes him as she drags her tongue slowly up his length.

The landlady doesn’t come back, but they commit themselves wholeheartedly to the illusion.


	23. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One character has nightmares and another comforts them - **G**
> 
> I'm just shamelessly unloading the longer prompt-fills to finish us off. FUCK DA POLICE ~~said Phryne Fisher to Jack Robinson after the iris out in that tent~~.

Phryne isn’t sure why she’s awake until she reaches out an arm and finds the bed empty. 

Then she sits bolt upright, panic coursing through her sleep-muddled brain before reason has time to stop it. Jack’s side of the bed is not cold, but cooling, and the darkness outside the window tells her that it’s still far from morning. 

She slips on a robe, halfway out into the corridor when she hears it; Jack’s voice, gentle and low, floating down the corridor. 

From Mary’s room. 

Phryne pads towards the sound, to where the door to their goddaughter’s room stands ajar, light spilling through it. She stands just to the side, head turned to listen. 

“It’s alright, Mary, deep breaths.” Beneath Jack’s soft words, Phryne hears the gasping, staccato sobs of a hysterical child that she remembers all too well robbing air from her own lungs in days gone by. 

Her heart aches a little at it, and she half moves to enter herself – but is stopped again by Jack speaking. 

“Your mummy will be fine, your Auntie Mac is taking care of her – and the baby – and they’ll be home before you know it.”

“But… but in my dream mummy was dead,” Mary whines, and Phryne’s eyes fall closed in sympathy. 

She has not been without her own nightmares since the birth.

“I promise you, she’s fine,” Jack soothes. “And tomorrow we’re going to take you and Christopher to see her – and the baby, alright?”

Mary sniffs, but says nothing further. 

“Now, do you think you can go back to sleep for me?” Jack asks, words tender. 

“Alright.”

“Good girl.”

There’s the sound of shuffling and then, before Phryne can move, Jack is at the doorway, startling as he sees her. 

“Phryne!” he exclaims in a whisper, throwing a look towards the door and moving back down the hall. “Sorry, I didn’t want to wake you – she came looking for her mother.”

Phryne examines him in the dim light of the corridor, a thought playing on her mind that she feels the sudden, strange urge to express. 

“You’re good at that,” she tells him, and he frowns. 

“Lots of nieces and nephews,” Jack replies with a shrug. “Lots of practice.”

Phryne chews her lip, examining him, mind churning the worrying idea like a stone caught in the spokes of a wheel. It rattles and grates, and she feels suddenly sick at it. 

“You’re not going to regret it, are you?”

The furrow in Jack’s brow deepens. “Regret what?” 

“Not having your own?” 

They discussed it, of course, long ago when they were each making absolutely clear their boundaries. She had reiterated her disinterest, and to her relief he had echoed the sentiment. 

Hearing him, though, so gentle and fatherly – she cannot help but panic. Cannot help but wonder if one day he might wake up full of regret and resentment. 

Jack, though, looks shocked at the idea. 

“God, no,” he breathes. “Phryne, any part of me that might have wanted that... that died when I went to war.”

He reaches for her hand, squeezing gently.

“I’ve no regrets – and no plans for any, either.”

She sighs, relieved, tugs him closer with their joined hands. 

“You’re absolutely sure?”

“Why – are _you_ regretting it?”

She scoffs, “ _God_ , no,” And he smiles. 

“Godchildren it is then.”

“Well, we've got _more_ than enough of those, now.”

Jack chuckles. “Perhaps it's time to reintroduce Dot to that handy device of yours.”

“Believe me,” Phryne smirks. “I've tried.”

“Well,” he muses. “I suppose some people's dreams are different,” 

She huffs out a chuckle. “Mm, some people’s dreams are others’ nightmares.”

“And some’s nightmares another’s dreams,” Jack agrees. 

She tilts her head, eyeing him with a small smile. “What are your dreams, Jack?”

He pulls her closer, leans in to capture her lips with reverence. “I think I’m living them, Miss Fisher.” 

Phryne smiles wider into his kiss – all but ready to drag him back to bed and make use of this unexpected consciousness before he has to leave for work.

Then a sound comes from back down the hall, soft little sobs that float through the quiet of the house. 

They part, and Jack turns towards the noise with a fond shake of his head, “See?” he smirks, “Godchildren. More than enough work for me.” 


	24. Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr Butler insists on feeding Jack while Phryne’s away - **T**

It starts with the biscuits, delivered surreptitiously by Dot – the implication always that she had made them for Hugh – yet somehow a whole tin always seems to land on his desk, too.

And Jack knows his biscuits, has spent enough time in Wardlow’s kitchen to know that Mr. Butler always adds a touch of cinnamon to his Anzacs for extra kick, and that Hugh is not a fan of cinnamon. 

He figures it out fast enough to be less surprised than he might have been when the first Shepherd’s Pie turns up – miraculously still warm, with a silver fork wrapped neatly in the napkin beside it that he knows as well; from a set some European prince had given her years ago, that she always liked to tease him about.

 _“Of course, the silver isn’t all he gave me_ – _but it's a nice little reminder of my time travelling Yugoslavia.”_

No, the Shepherd’s Pie doesn’t really surprise him – nor does the gratin that appears, as if by magic, several days later, the lamb casserole several days after that, the beef stew, the fish pie, the assortment of fruit crumbles. 

Jack finds himself shaking his head fondly at them all – even takes to writing small notes of thanks to send back with his cleaned dishes – but what truly surprises him is when, months after this nonsense started, a small chicken pie appears, quite pointedly held in Dot’s hands. She strides into his office one lunchtime as if she’d been delivering them this explicitly all along, and places it down with a simple, “We’re dining at Wardlow with Jane tonight, she’s back for the holidays – I’m sure she’d be delighted if you came.”

Jack has the good sense to know that this may as well be a rhetorical question, but smiles and nods, anyway.

“I’d be delighted, thank you, Mrs. Collins.”

She grins smugly to herself and retreats from his office again with nothing more than a time to arrive and good wishes for the rest of the day. 

The house seems oddly quiet when Jack arrives, though, and when Mr. Butler opens the door Jack notes the flickering candlelight in the dining room with confusion.

“How are you, Mr. Butler?” Jack asks, eyes on the dining room as he is relieved of his coat. 

“Very well, thank you, Inspector.” The butler smiles back. “And yourself?”

Jack returns his smile with warmth. “All the better for being so well fed – Miss Fisher is quite right to call you an angel.”

The man inclines his head in response. “Well, I must confess I’ve had ulterior motives, Inspector,” he replies, a joke in his eyes Jack doesn’t quite understand. 

“Oh?”

“Of course he did – I told him I’d be absolutely _furious_ if I returned to find you wasted away.”

Jack whips his head towards the voice so fast he almost loses his balance, blinking at where she stands shadowed in the doorway to the parlour, a smirk fighting to lift one corner of her mouth.

“Miss Fisher,” he breathes, a shocked, delighted, whisper. 

“Hello, Jack.”

Before he can even wrap his head around her presence, around the fact she is _here_ – and that he has been quite excellently tricked – she is standing in front of him, hands on his chest. 

He notes, with not a little admiration, that Mr. Butler has already disappeared back into the flickering light of the dining room. 

“I hope you’re hungry, Jack, Mr. B’s positively ecstatic to get to feed you in person again.”

“Starving,” he manages to rasp out in response, and her lips curve into a gratified smile, eyes glittering. 

“Come on, then,” she purrs, one hand dropping to clasp his and tugging him back towards the parlour. 

“I think you’ll find the dining room is the other way, Miss Fisher,” Jack remarks, though allows her to drag him through the doorway, watching the way she keeps her eyes on him as she turns the key in the lock with another hunger stirring in his gut. 

“I thought we might have appetisers first,” she grins, and it proves fuel enough for his brain to finally releases him from the torpid effects of his awe. He closes the short distance between them, pulling her to him, mouth moving eagerly to hers. 

“I am _very_ hungry,” he quips, and she chuckles into the kiss. 

“Don’t let me keep you waiting then, Inspector.”

Jack dips his head briefly to kiss her neck, then joins their hands again to tug her towards the chaise. He has waited long enough – though only half as long as he’d thought he would have to – and now his brain has caught up to the fact she has been wending her way home to him in secret for weeks (just for the purposes of this, now, this surprise reunion) he doesn’t plan to waste another second. 

Mr. Butler appears long gone by the time they emerge again, rumpled and somewhat more sated, but there is a Shepherd’s Pie (miraculously still warm) sitting on the dining room table waiting for them, two forks that once belonged to a European prince sitting expectantly alongside it. 

The man is, Jack thinks again, quite definitely an angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun history factoid: From 1918 to 1929, Yugoslavia was officially called the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, though was known colloquially as just 'Yugoslavia' (literally, 'Land of the Southern Slavs'). In October of 1929 King Alexander I officially changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.


	25. Closeness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack or Phryne sleepwalks into the other’s bedroom at night - **G**
> 
> Well better me crumpets, we made it! This turned out _so_ much more fun than I ever expected it to be, and I've been a bit overwhelmed by the response - certainly since it started as more of a joke with myself because a) I couldn't choose a prompt, and b) I am impossibly awful at keeping things short. So my endless, endless thanks to everyone for your lovely comments, your kudos, and for stopping by in the first place.
> 
> My eternal love to LeChatNoir1918, and E, for putting up with drabbles being tossed at them here, there and everywhere whilst I worked through them - and on that note LeChatty has filled this very prompt beautifully and _smuttily,_ so go check that gem out if you haven't! 

When he first wakes to see her standing over him, Jack half assumes that the dam has just broken – that she is ending this dance of theirs and is there to make him choose, finally, one way or another before she wastes more time on him. 

As her shadow approaches, Jack frets that he’s still not even sure of his own answer. 

When she climbs onto the bed he thinks the decision might be halfway to made, though, and his hands are halfway to reaching for her when he realises that something isn’t right. 

She is sliding herself under the sheets beside him but her movements are heavy and oddly chaste, her arms wrapping around his waist, face burying itself in her neck where she sighs, her warm breath tickling his skin. 

When he looks down, her eyes are tightly closed, and he blinks in utter bemusement as understanding dawns. 

She is asleep. 

Completely, unshakably asleep. 

He lies frozen for a moment, quite unsure what to do, how to deal with this, what a strange joke it is that she has found her way here to him, unconscious. 

She cannot stay here, he realises. Despite the fact he’s sure she’d find the idea of having to sneak from his room come morning highly amusing, he doesn’t much like the idea of her waking in his bed with no recollection how she got there. 

He doesn’t much like the idea of her waking in his bed when she hadn’t consciously chosen to be _in_ it. 

“Miss Fisher?” he whispers into the dark, hoping perhaps she might rouse at least enough to remove herself, to wander back from whence she came and have no memory of this odd event come morning. 

She remains stubbornly motionless, however, save for the steady rhythm of her breathing. Jack moves a hand to the arm that encircles him, slipping his fingers gently beneath to try and pry it away. As he does, though, her nails dig into his side where she clings, and she shakes her head against his shoulder. 

“No,” she insists, alarmingly alert, and Jack immediately lets go, startled. 

He tilts his head to check her face again, to search for signs she has awoken, but finds her still steadfastly insensible. 

Phryne, it seems, is as obstinate in sleep as she is in wakefulness. 

Jack sighs, resigning himself a little to this strange fate. He really has no idea how he’ll explain it come morning, but she seems determined to remain wrapped around him for now – and he cannot deny that the feel of her in his arms has his heart melting in his chest as it beats in time with her own where she’s pressed against him. 

“Night, Jack,” she whispers then, snuggling closer into him, and Jack half jumps again at her words. At the acknowledgment that she knows precisely whose arms she’s crawled into. 

God knows, truly, how either of them will talk their way out of this tomorrow – but tonight it seems a dam has indeed broken between them, a different kind of need compelling them which he cannot find it in himself to deny. 

“Goodnight, Phryne,” Jack murmurs, awestruck, and she sighs in something that sounds suspiciously like contentment. He allows himself to wrap an arm around her, to hold her carefully in response as he surrenders back to his own slumber. 

Together, they dream, lulled by a closeness they still refuse to name in waking.

In the split second before reality hits, when Jack wakes to the soft glow of sunlight and the warmth of her still nestled in his arms, his mind christens it, unbidden.

_Love._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally 26 chapters, but 25 spiralled into its own thing so I've posted all damn 5000 words of that separately. I wouldn't be me if I didn't go heinously over word count on _something_.
> 
> Stay safe, everyone <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Senseless](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25240510) by [Miss_Ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Ash)




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